Nico Rosberg will be celebrating on Sunday night in Australia after making the best possible start to the season with victory in the race at Albert Park today.

The German driver took the lead at the first corner and never looked back, seeing off the challenge of Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo and McLaren’s Kevin Magnussen to win the race by over 20 seconds. Having enjoyed a successful pre-season, Mercedes was expected to be the team to beat, but Rosberg was delighted to have delivered when it mattered on race day in Melbourne.

“That was an incredible day for us,” he explained. “To start the season with a win is unbelievable and I have to say a big thank you to everybody who was involved in building our car over the winter. I always dreamed of having such a strong Silver Arrow and now it seems we are there.”

“In the race, everything went perfectly for me,” he said. “My start was great and I was able to push from there until the end, with our fuel consumption well under control.

“However, despite our success today, we also know that there is still some work to do. We saw over the weekend that reliability is still a concern and it prevented us from having a strong two-car finish. We have two weeks to improve that.”